Left views from the right coast

Day: October 13, 2008

Money for the states and for municipalities so they don’t have to cut back services.

Increases in unemployment benefits, food stamps, welfare and so on for relief, and also because poor people spend that money immediately, so bang for buck it’s the best stimulus possible.

Laws intended to make sure oil prices don’t go up, like making every road a 55 mile an hour one if faster, a program to buy back the worst 10% of cars on the road for mpg with a credit to buy a new, most fuel efficient car made in the US; everyone works 9 hour days and gets a long weekend every two weeks; a program intended to refit houses that use heating oil;, and so on.

Direct, government spent stimulus (for the purposes of stimulus a government doing things is just fine) to green the economy in a massive way. Money is money, making the economy more efficient is just as good a way to spend money as any other. In fact, better, since it too will fight against energy inflation.

I see no reason to limit such commonsense to south of the border. It seems to me that the three national opposition parties are offering this in various ways, but the Conservatives are sitting back, arms crossed, maintaining that “the foundations of the economy are sound”, crossing their fingers that it’s true. Yes, the Canadian banking system is in better shape than it’s American counterparts owing to the relatively tight regulations that Stephen Harper and the Conservatives fought tooth and nail, but they are exposed in much the same way European banks are – through shaky loans to now-crumbling American monoliths. Hence the 25-billion dollar bailout announced this week.